Seminole tribe's financial gamble extends to banking

It's a Florida conglomerate with the promise of riches that would make a dot-com venture capitalist pant with envy.

The Seminole Indian Tribe of Florida, already well established in gambling, is quickly getting involved in another line of work: Banking.

And why not? In heady economic times, it's hard to tell the difference between two businesses that both bet on money.

The tribe's gambling arm is raking in cash and looking at bold expansion plans. This week, Seminole officials and executives of Hard Rock Cafe International revealed a $400-million plan to build casino-hotels in Tampa and Hollywood, Fla.

With all that money rolling in, what better place to put it but the tribe's own bank? That's one reason the Seminoles made a recent $6.4-million offer to buy the tiny Independent Community Bank of Tequesta in Palm Beach County.

Bank president Frederick Martin says the Seminoles are interested in the bank because it would allow them to earn more on their gambling profit and avoid fees charged by other banks. The Tequesta bank has lost money since it opened two years ago.

Nationwide, Indian tribes own or control parts of more than a dozen small banks. In Florida, banking regulators believe the Tequesta deal is the first time the Seminoles have sought control of a state-chartered bank.

But it's not the tribe's first venture into banking.

The Seminoles are one of about a dozen American Indian tribes behind a company called Native American Bancorp. that's buying the small Blackfeet National Bank from the Blackfeet Tribe in Browning, Mont. Each of the tribes has agreed to invest about $1-million in the institution.

Bank officials say the merger will help Blackfeet National, which will operate out of Denver as Native American National Bank, offer more competitive rates and fees for its customers. It also will increase the tribes' borrowing capacity.

Of course, ownership of banks gives American Indian tribes newfound control over their growing wealth from gambling operations and -- more significant -- over where to lend money.

For example, the Foxwood casino in Ledyard, Conn., has annual revenues of more than $1-billion. Cash flow from that casino alone has made Connecticut's Pequot Tribe one of the wealthiest in North America.

That lesson has not been lost on the Seminoles, who are exempt from Florida gambling laws. The tribe is betting that new rules under federal review will allow more Las Vegas-style gambling games (currently prohibited in Florida) anywhere on reservation lands. That includes the newly proposed 200-room Hard Rock Cafe hotel off Orient Road in Hillsborough County, as well as the planned 750-room Hard Rock Cafe Hotel-casino in Hollywood.

Indian officials also hope that their own nationally chartered Native American bank will give the tribes the clout to gain access to billions of dollars earned from leasing land and from court settlements but held in trust by the U.S. government. The bank's backers want the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to be more accountable and hand over much of that money to the Indian tribes.

Native American Bancorp.'s goal is to establish the nation's largest inter-tribal bank by providing large-scale loans nationwide to Indian-owned businesses and investing in non-Indian companies.

Tribes likely to benefit range from the Tlingit and Haida in Alaska to the Utes in Colorado. For the Seminoles, the greater the stake in banking, the bigger the expansion in gambling.

Short takes

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